Jenny Cooper 03 - The Redeemed

by M. R. Hall

  ‘Hey!’

  They spun round at the sound of another male voice. Walking towards them was a priest holding a spray can at arm’s length as if it might explode in his hand. The one with the night stick was raising it over his shoulder as the dirt-brown jet of pepper spray snaked out of the nozzle and hit his face. Starr switched aim to his friend and caught him while he was still off-guard.

  Jenny had never heard grown men howl. Their eyes on fire, they floundered like pole-axed drunks, the thug dropping to his knees, the suit collapsing against the reception desk.

  Father Starr was as surprised as she was, and crossed himself twice. Coughlin was on his feet now, but with a hand clamped across his middle. He hobbled towards Jenny.

  ‘Did you find them?’

  She shook her head.

  Coughlin pulled her out of the doorway and went back down the passage to the storeroom. There was a brief, pitiful cry from Lynd and a few moments later the detective returned with a box under his arm.

  He placed a hand in the small of Jenny’s back and steered her around the two blinded men.

  As the three of them left the building Starr said, ‘I found it in the glove box. Did I do the right thing?’

  Couglin replied, ‘God was with you, Father.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  COUGHLIN INSISTED IT WAS TOO risky to take the files back to Jenny’s office or his poky hotel room at the Holiday Inn, so they went instead to a room in Clifton Cathedral Starr said would be empty at this time of the evening. The air inside the building was heavy with incense. Watching Father Starr and Coughlin dab their foreheads with holy water and genuflect to the altar, Jenny had a vision of crusaders in the Middle Ages, thanking God for helping them slay the heathen.

  They made their way to an office on the lower floor. Jenny stationed Father Starr by the photocopier and had Coughlin make a list of the most important documents she brought out, giving each a reference. Like all law firms that charged per hour what the average person made in a week, Reed Falkirk & Co. kept immaculate files. There were eight in total, the earliest containing papers dating back several years to some of Eva’s early film contracts. Jenny worked methodically through them, charting Eva’s rise from secondary artiste to star. For the last year of her performing life she stepped up from ‘consulting’ to ‘executive’ producer, and even shared screen-writing credits. Her final acting fee was £43,000 for a two-picture deal. Not bad money for three weeks’ work.

  File number six began with Eva’s contract of employment with the Decency campaign. Her salary was £36,000 for the year, in return for which she pledged her exclusive services, to undertake whatever media assignments were arranged for her, and to ‘conduct herself at all times in a morally impeccable manner and in accordance with the principles of the Decency campaign’.

  The problems had begun the previous autumn, when GlamourX refused to pay her royalties, asserting that her involvement with Decency contradicted the terms of their agreement. Eva wrote a stream of increasingly emotional letters to Michael Turnbull complaining that she was losing £8,000 per month and could barely afford to pay her mortgage. Lynd had done his best to argue her corner, but Kennedy and Parr had stonewalled him, claiming Eva’s disputes with former employers were nothing to do with their client.

  Eva had exploded the bomb the previous November. A letter signed by Ed Prince warned Lynd that his client had made ‘allegations of a sexual nature relating to alleged previous contact between her and Lord Turnbull at a business reception in 2003’, and that unless she retracted the accusation and signed an undertaking never to repeat it, ‘serious consequences’ would ensue. Another angry letter from Ed Prince dated two weeks later stated that, as she had failed to sign, High Court proceedings would be started immediately. The next item in the file was a copy of Mr Justice Laithwaite’s original order, dated 3 December. The injunction prohibited Eva (who in the secret proceedings was referred to only as ‘B’) from disclosing any details of any past meetings or sexual contact between her and ‘A’ to any third parties. In particular, she was to make no mention of any past connection or relations between her and ‘A’ to his wife, colleagues, friends or associates.

  Jenny handed the order to Coughlin. ‘Look at that. It means Christine Turnbull didn’t know.’

  Coughlin was sceptical.

  Jenny continued. ‘It’s an injunction to protect privacy. If the cat was out of the bag there would have been no point mentioning her in the order if she knew already. It also explains why Eva wasn’t sacked – how would Turnbull have explained that to his wife?’

  Starr and Coughlin exchanged a glance.

  Jenny turned through the following pages of the file. There were a number of letters about unpaid fees and Eva’s angry reply.

  ‘Wow,’ Jenny said, ‘things were really turning ugly in February.’ She was looking at a note Lynd had made of a meeting with Eva. Turnbull’s lawyers had demanded that she hand over her laptop computer and mobile for ‘security reasons’. Eva was objecting, saying she needed the phone for her producing work. Jenny read out the note:

  E. D. ill-tempered and truculent, claiming that Christine Turnbull is encouraging violent exorcisms that are taking place at the Mission Church targeting gays and the mentally ill. Claims to have witnessed an incident involving a disturbed teenager. I advised that such complaints were unconnected with her employment dispute with Decency and should be directed to the church trustees. E. D. pointed out that Christine Turnbull is chairman of the trustees. I repeated my former advice and stressed the need for payment of outstanding bills before Reed Falkirk would undertake further contractual work or litigation. E. D. became increasingly irrational, threatening to break the terms of the December injunction. I advised of consequences.

  Jenny said, ‘That must have been Freddy Reardon. It’s a miracle Eva held out as long as she did.’

  Starr said, ‘Surely the opposite of a miracle, Mrs Cooper?’

  ‘What does contractual work mean?’ Coughlin asked.

  Jenny had reached the end of the file and opened the last one. It contained a handful of loose documents, some of them stamped DRAFT. She fanned them out across the desk.

  There were forms relating to the formation of a new company to be called, ‘Fallen Angel Ltd’; the directors were named as Eva Donaldson and Joseph Cassidy.

  ‘She was starting a production company with her ex-boyfriend,’ Jenny said, then pulled out a document headed Actors’ Agreement and ran her eye down the page. ‘Oh . . .’

  She couldn’t explain why she was so disappointed with Eva, or even why it came as a surprise.

  Father Starr stepped towards her. ‘What is it?’

  She handed the paper to him, preferring not to read it aloud. She glanced through the other papers – technicians’ contracts, actors’ medical warranties, a studio-hire agreement – while Starr and Coughlin read about the production Eva was planning to mount in August: Daddy’s Girl. Among the papers Jenny found a letter Damien Lynd had drafted to a potential investor in the movie. It contained what he called the ‘elevator pitch’: ‘Eva plays a beautiful young woman who, following a disfiguring attack by a jealous boyfriend, turns to the only man who’ll still love her – her daddy.’

  Jenny showed the letter to Starr and Coughlin.

  The two men read in silence, then Coughlin said, ‘Do you believe she would have made this film?’

  Jenny thought about it. ‘No. I think she was testing God, and hoping one way or another he wouldn’t let her.’

  Starr didn’t comment and put the letter back on the table. ‘What do you think, Sean? Do you have enough to make an arrest?’

  ‘We’ve got a car and a motive,’ Coughlin said. ‘The only person I’ve got to convince is my Presbyterian Super’.’ ‘We’ll pray for him,’ Starr replied.

  It was past nine when Coughlin dropped her back at her car, an hour later than she’d told Steve she would be at his farm for dinner. She dialled his number repeatedly as she sp
ed out of the city and across the Severn Bridge, the low evening sun making the water beneath her glow an unholy red. Each time it rang and rang without answer.

  Evening had faded to dusk as she bumped along the rough track and turned into the yard. There was no sign of his Land Rover or the dog. She climbed out of the car and made her way through the empty lower storey of the barn. She called his name up the rickety stairs, but there was no reply. The door to his loft was bolted shut. She went out into the yard and around the edge of the vegetable garden to the area of grass, somewhere between a garden and a small meadow. She saw that he had set two places on the table he had made himself from a fallen cherry tree.

  Jenny sat on one of the bentwood chairs listening to the faltering grasshoppers and watching the bats flitting in the fading light. She left him a note under the water jug. It said: One last try? Jx. It could have been a perfect evening. Instead, it felt like an end.

  Steve didn’t call back that evening, or at all. The weekend had felt as if it would never end. His silence, which for days had been so convenient, now felt like a yawning void. On Monday morning, Jenny sat in her car outside her office, hoping that in the last few minutes before nine he’d phone and say he’d forgiven her; he didn’t. She would have phoned him, except she was too frightened of what he’d say, terrified that he’d tell her now was the time to face everything she had been putting off.

  Alison muttered a muted good morning as Jenny came through the door carrying the box containing Eva’s files. Jenny noticed she was dressed more soberly than of late and, through the fog of her own emotions, realized that her officer was close to tears.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Perfectly, thank you, Mrs Cooper,’ came Alison’s brittle reply. She fetched a single sheet from the fax machine. ‘I presume this is for you. I’m just making a cup of tea. Would you like one?’

  ‘Coffee would be good.’

  The fax was a copy of a statement Coughlin had taken late the previous evening from a Mrs Diane Grant. She stated that on the evening of 9 May she had been on her way out of the house to collect her daughter from the railway station when she noticed a well-dressed woman walking briskly towards a large, maroon-coloured sports car on the opposite side of the road, some twenty yards from Eva Donaldson’s house. The woman had climbed into the driver’s seat and driven away fast. She had appeared relaxed enough, Mrs Grant said, but she had been carrying a tatty carrier bag, which had looked odd for someone driving such an expensive car. She confirmed that she had told this to a detective on the morning of Tuesday, 11 May, and that she hadn’t been contacted by the police since.

  Competing with the sound of the heating kettle, Jenny said, ‘I paid a visit to Eva Donaldson’s solicitors last Friday evening. I forced disclosure of her files—’

  ‘I know where you went, Mrs Cooper.’

  ‘You do?’

  Alison didn’t reply. She banged cupboard doors and noisily clinked spoons and cups, managing to channel what felt from Jenny’s end of the passage like boiling rage into the act of making their drinks. There was a short silence, followed by a sob.

  ‘Do you mind my asking how?’ Jenny said.

  Through sniffles, Alison said, ‘I was with Martin. He was at my house . . . He had a call, said he had to go . . . I’d been a bit suspicious, I thought he mightn’t have been telling the truth about being separated from his wife, so I followed him . . . I followed his car to Easton, where another man got in, then to Queen Square . . . I saw him go into the office and then you coming out with the others . . . I should have gone after you, but I didn’t know what was happening . . . I promise you, Mrs Cooper, I had no idea, I really didn’t. He seemed so genuine.’

  ‘Did he ask many questions?’

  ‘Not really . . . not that I noticed.’ She broke down into a fit of sobs.

  Jenny felt her anger subside. ‘I’m sorry, Alison. You weren’t to know. I knew those lawyers were capable of some pretty low things—’

  ‘I’ve no excuse, Mrs Cooper . . . I should have—’ She left the entence unfinished as tears overwhelmed her. Jenny hovered ineffectually, not sure how to comfort her, when the telephone rescued her from making a decision.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Alison sniffed.

  ‘No. I will,’ Jenny said, and hurried into her office, terrified it would be Steve.

  ‘Bloody hell, Jenny. Did you know about this?’ It was Simon Moreton. He was furious.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The arrest. The bloody Met have arrested Christine Turnbull outside the House of bloody Lords. In front of the world’s press, on her way in to watch her husband open the debate. Dear God . . .’ he stammered. ‘What the hell have they got on her?’

  Jenny spoke quietly: ‘I’m not sure you want to know.’

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck. It’s the Lord Chancellor on the other line. Wait there—’

  Jenny rang off and switched on her PC.

  She brought up the live news on the internet. A near-hysterical reporter spoke over a replay of images taken outside the main entrance to the House of Lords in Parliament Square. A smiling Michael and Christine Turnbull climbed out of a familiar black Mercedes van and made their way towards a scrum of media corralled behind a barrier. As they paused to field questions, two police cars pulled up, sirens blaring. The camera caught the look of shock on Christine Turnbull’s face as Sean Coughlin and a female detective walked towards her, Coughlin saying, ‘Lady Turnbull, I regret to inform you that you are under arrest . . .’ The rest was lost in the explosion of hysteria among the reporters. The cameraman fought to hold on to the image of Christine being led to a police car, shaking her head as her husband stood paralysed. He made a half-hearted attempt to follow her, but was swallowed up by the crowd who had broken out from behind the barrier and were swarming the police car as it pulled away from the kerb. The cameraman caught a brief shot of Christine crouched in the back seat, her hands shielding her face.

  Coughlin was in the seat in front of her. Jenny could have sworn she saw him smile.

  As the footage played in a continuous loop, the studio anchors reported that police had confirmed that Christine Turnbull had been arrested in connection with the murder of Miss Eva Donaldson. There was speculation that, despite his wife’s arrest, Michael Turnbull would go ahead and open the debate on the Decency Bill, but at ten-thirty it was confirmed that the reading had been postponed. At eleven a.m. Anna-belle Stern stepped in front of the cameras and announced that Decency had been well prepared for acts of sabotage, but not even in their direst predictions had they imagined something so malicious or elaborate. She promised that Christine Turnbull had no involvement whatever in the death of the former actress, Eva Donaldson, and that the campaign would only be strengthened by these events.

  For the next few days it seemed that Annabelle Stern might be proved right.

  TWENTY-SIX

  CHRISTINE TURNBULL MADE NO COMMENT in her police interview and (according to the word on Alison’s grapevine) became increasingly confident that the circumstantial case against her would be too weak to support a conviction. Apart from the eyewitness who had placed her at Eva’s house, only the Turnbulls’ nanny had implicated her, and it was rumoured that the young woman had already retracted large portions of her statement. Against all the odds, it seemed that Decency was witnessing a miracle.

  But late on Thursday afternoon, former Assistant Commissioner Geoffrey Solomon, a member of the Mission Church of God’s council, emailed an unsworn statement to the police from a rented villa in Morocco, a country with which the UK had no formal extradition treaty. His price for converting his statement into sworn testimony was a guarantee of immunity from prosecution. DI Coughlin forwarded a copy to Jenny in confidence, saying in the attached note that he was happy for God to be Solomon’s judge, as was the Attorney General: Solomon would be the principal witness for the prosecution.

  As Jenny read through Solomon’s damning testimonial she finally heard the prison gate
s closing on Christine Turnbull:

  . . . I received a telephone call from Michael Turnbull early on the afternoon of Monday, 10 May. He said he needed to meet straight away on a matter he couldn’t discuss on the telephone. I caught a train to London and we met at his Kensington flat. Michael was in a dreadful state, he looked ill and distracted. After much prompting, he told me that his wife, Christine, had gone to confront Eva Donaldson at her home the previous evening and had returned later saying that she thought she had killed her. Michael called his lawyers, who immediately sent a car for her. He hadn’t seen her since late the previous night.

  I had been aware of some tension between Eva and the Decency campaign over money, but I had no idea what had transpired between her and Michael. He told me that in the previous November they had argued over Decency’s decision not to increase her salary. Eva then confronted him with the allegation that six years previously she had been one of a number of hostesses at a party Michael had held for business associates. Eva claimed that she and the other girls had had sexual contact with Michael and a number of his guests. I didn’t ask him whether or not this was true, but I gained the distinct impression that it was.

  By this time Eva had become critical to the Decency campaign. Michael had no choice but to seek an injunction preventing her from repeating her allegation elsewhere. He deeply regretted having kept all this from his wife, but he feared that she was under such pressure of work it would have been an unnecessary burden to place on her.

  Once Eva had been served with the injunction she abided by its terms, but in recent weeks she had started to complain about methods of prayer counselling at the Mission Church of God. Michael was aware of at least two occasions on which Eva confronted Christine Turnbull at the church offices over the issue, leading to heated exchanges.

  On the evening of Saturday 8 May, matters came to a head. Eva telephoned Christine from a hotel in Manchester and told her that unless the prayer counselling was stopped, she was going to resign from the Decency campaign and go public with a number of allegations, including the details of the sex party. She also claimed to have been threatened by Ed Prince, the Turnbulls’ personal lawyer and a trustee of the church, that if she broke the terms of her injunction her life ‘wouldn’t be worth living’.